I made game like civilization. How can I earn money with this game? Any idea?

[VetLegion]

2. Is your population divided in cities, with a given set of tiles available to exploit around them? Or is it divided in provinces?

Answer : When you build your city in a square you can use its neighboors.and it.(You can use 9 squares)And you can make 9 buildings.(One in one square maximum,if your city isnt neighboor with river,sea or hill.You cant make buildings on them.)Every building can carry 2 citizen for teacher,militaristic engineer ext.Every square can carry 1 citizen to product food,grape,tobacco,wood,mine ext. It means one city's population can be 9*2+9*1=27 maximum

This is pretty radical. in Colonisation (also a Microprose game) city could only exploit 9 squares. Brian Reynolds said in an interview that this was a late change, and that it allowed cities to specialise, instead of having everything in every city.

It will be interesting to see how this works out in your game.

[neonext]

Originally posted by axi
(neonext is the creator of the civiliza project, a civ2 clone which is still in alpha status)

Nice to know it isn't just a secret. BTW, I strongly incourage anyone to try the next version when it is ready (within a week or two). Lots of new features, from diplomacy to scenarios and more. For those of you who haven't heard of my project and want more info, please click on the link in my sig.

Ron Hiler? Hasn't he resigned from alt.civ. moderator?

Yes, he has.

Anayway, the first step is to post details in the Alt.Civs section and in any case stay in Apolyton: this is THE place to be, for anything that has to do with civ-type games.

Agreed.

It is known that all big heads of the genre (Sid Meier, Brian Reynolds, Dan Magaha and the Firaxis crew) are frequently browsing Apolyton.

Yeah, where do you think the new Civ3 "turnless" mode came from? jk

[gumuso]

Originally posted by axi
MarkG is the site co-owner and co-administrator. He posted somewhere above.

You didn't answer question #6, about the government types.

As for graphics, there are alot of relatively skilled graphics artists to be found in the modding sections of civ2 and civ3. Several people have made good graphics for Clash of Civilisations, the project I was helping with and most of them were picked up from these forums.

"Invasion".... Hmm... this brings to mind the marching sound and the message "The Vikings have captured the city of Athens. 560 gold pieces plundered."

I woke up but i thing you are sleeping now but it is not important. Answer of 6 : There are 5 different goverments.Anarchy-Teocracy-Feudalism-Monarchy-KingStyle-Democracy all have different help points to military-science-economy like civilization bonuses.

[Henrik]

This all looks very promising

[gumuso]

Originally posted by Henrik
This all looks very promising

thanx, and i took your icon(man holding gun), maybe i can use it in my game because i have a problem with unit pictures.Did you visited www.istila.oyunu.com

[axi]

Thanks for the screenshots. I see your game looks alot like civ, something between civ1 and 2 in terms of graphics. Your gameplay used classic elements, yet it encompassed some features not yet implemented in civ-type games (selling commodities, the climate effect, the limited city buildup that VetLegion mentioned and I don't know what else). The good thing is that your gameplay looks complete. I think that you need to do three things, before you can make the game marketable.

1. A graphics upgrade. Your graphics have to be original (you can't go on borrowing graphics from here and there). They have to be tailored to look coherent and give your game a special style.

2. Addition of multiplayer. I don;t know how easy this is, but it is essential, specially if your game is virtually a wargame with trading involved. You may need to seek help on this.

3. Extensive playtesting and polishing of gameplay features and AI, to the extent that this is needed. Expert civ players can find their way to victory around every AI and gameplay glitch available. Your goal is to make this difficult, otherwise players will lose interst quickly. Your game has to be as challenging as possible in order to succeed.

[gumuso]

Originally posted by axi
Thanks for the screenshots. I see your game looks alot like civ, something between civ1 and 2 in terms of graphics. Your gameplay used classic elements, yet it encompassed some features not yet implemented in civ-type games (selling commodities, the climate effect, the limited city buildup that VetLegion mentioned and I don't know what else). The good thing is that your gameplay looks complete. I think that you need to do three things, before you can make the game marketable.

1. A graphics upgrade. Your graphics have to be original (you can't go on borrowing graphics from here and there). They have to be tailored to look coherent and give your game a special style.

2. Addition of multiplayer. I don;t know how easy this is, but it is essential, specially if your game is virtually a wargame with trading involved. You may need to seek help on this.

3. Extensive playtesting and polishing of gameplay features and AI, to the extent that this is needed. Expert civ players can find their way to victory around every AI and gameplay glitch available. Your goal is to make this difficult, otherwise players will lose interst quickly. Your game has to be as challenging as possible in order to succeed.

I woke up again.

I am good at codding AI. Because I learnt a lot of algorithms to join computer olympics at Finland one year before. My AI usually wins the match between me and it. Also my game's other differences from civ serie :

* All civilization have civ points in militaristic,in science in economy.So these civ points help developing in this area.For example civ points of Italy;
5 out of 5 in science
3 out of 5 in militaristic
4 out of 5 in economy.

* If you chose Chinese , Russians or Indians your population rises fastly and you can make your city cheaper.

* There are prices for city building. For example Turks pay 30 Golds to build their city but Indians pay 20 Golds to build their city. So you cant build everywhere city. And city capturing's importance increases. If you havent got enought money you cant build your city.

* You can discover mines at mountains. You examine mountains with key ' i ' and there is a probability for discovering mine. You send your settler to mountain and push ' i ' and sometimes you find iron or copper or gold mine. They all have different values. For example iron is usually 5, copper is usually 7 , gold is usually 24
food is u.ly 1 , cotton is u.ly 2 , tobacco is u.ly 3.

* You product cigarett (cost u.ly 12)e from tobacco , jacket (cost u.ly 20) from cotton and fur , wine (cost u.ly 15) from grapes. So you can sell them expansive after process them.But you must build factory to your city.

* There are native cities and they collect money from you in 5-6 turns.If you dont give they attack you.

And lots lots lots

But i thing my games graphic quality is between civ2 and civ3 ; not civ1 and civ2. Civ2 only has diamond shaped map , it is not important = shape of map. For example Imperialism game square map tiles too. But its graphics are good too. I havent put city table yet to my site but i will add my city table 7 hours later.The most interesting part of my game is it. Because it has more details than all others.

[Pekka]

If you decide to make lots of money, you should add Finnish tribe, because we buy tens of thousands of copies of that game then, naturally I do the vocals and sounds for them and get 20% sales made in Finland. Deal?

It was a joke.

Good luck with your game, if you don't find publisher, or make good selling, you can always find a job in other game projects if it's good.

[Henrik]

Originally posted by gumuso
thanx, and i took your icon(man holding gun), maybe i can use it in my game because i have a problem with unit pictures.Did you visited www.istila.oyunu.com

My avatar is a swedish musketeer from around 1700, I didn't draw it however you should contact Arne Schmied about using his units if you want to do so.
He is one of the webmasters of http://civ2.gamigo.de

I did visit the site but I likely won't be able to play the game as I use a mac and I don't expect you to instantaniously port the game you've just spent years coding

[VetLegion]

I am good at codding AI. Because I learnt a lot of algorithms to join computer olympics at Finland one year before. My AI usually wins the match between me and it.

Your AI beats you? Amazing. Does it get production, food and other bonuses? Does it cheat, and how much if yes?

You say it casually, but if you made a good AI this may be the best feature of your game. AI is the week spot of many civ games, to the point that Civ 3 was designed and produced basicly around the 'is this feature manageable by AI' idea. They tailored the game so they could be able to make AI for it.

So this is quite a big issue


and I asked for how much do you mean selling it, I should have been more clear: How much are you going to charge it? In dollars, how much will it cost?

If you plant to market the game at 30-40 US $, like other new games do you have huge amount of work to do for anyone to buy it.

If you plan to sell it for 5 $, then you have less expectations to fill and you have less work to do

Or you could make it shareware with a couple dollars registration for a full version


I suggest english demo first and then you see what response you get and decide what to do


Some of your concepts, like paying for cities sound interesting, but there is really no point in commenting them until I try it out, so hurry with the demo

[gumuso]

Originally posted by VetLegion

I am good at codding AI. Because I learnt a lot of algorithms to join computer olympics at Finland one year before. My AI usually wins the match between me and it.

Your AI beats you? Amazing. Does it get production, food and other bonuses? Does it cheat, and how much if yes?

You say it casually, but if you made a good AI this may be the best feature of your game. AI is the week spot of many civ games, to the point that Civ 3 was designed and produced basicly around the 'is this feature manageable by AI' idea. They tailored the game so they could be able to make AI for it.

So this is quite a big issue


and I asked for how much do you mean selling it, I should have been more clear: How much are you going to charge it? In dollars, how much will it cost?

If you plant to market the game at 30-40 US $, like other new games do you have huge amount of work to do for anyone to buy it.

If you plan to sell it for 5 $, then you have less expectations to fill and you have less work to do

Or you could make it shareware with a couple dollars registration for a full version


I suggest english demo first and then you see what response you get and decide what to do


Some of your concepts, like paying for cities sound interesting, but there is really no point in commenting them until I try it out, so hurry with the demo

*AI finds good places and build their city
*AI connect its cities with road
*AI makes irragilations near its city
*AI defends its cities and mafe fortififty more soldiers in its important cities.
*AI attack to enemies espicially to important cities.
*AI product all it can it product tobacco,builds tobacco-cigarette factory.Put workers to factory and it products cigarette and sell expensive and it earns more gold.
*AI product defensive soldiers if it need or it products attacker soldiers if it need.
*AI controls tax-science expenses ext.
*AI choose best sciences to develop its civ early.
*AI uses productive lands,find out mines in mountains or try to find,it cut forests if it need.
*AI can do what i can do
*And it is computer=no mistake & hurry

[Laertes]

To reply to your original question try this site: www.sloperama.com

[Buck Birdseed]

There have been many examples of games being successfully sold over the internet, most notably Uplink which has become very successful with nearly no investment capital and is now also sold in shops. You would need to devote quite a lot of time to marketting the game though...